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In the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, no hearty saplings were ever able to take root in the shade of that big tree. No one expected Vice President Dick Cheney to ever be a contender for the presidency — part of his effectiveness was his willingness to say and do very unpopular things. When he snapped at ABC's Martha Raddatz, "So?" as she questioned him about public disapproval of the Iraq war, he wrote the perfect epitaph for his vice presidency.

But by the time the Bush era was winding down, the whole administration, including the president, was stewed in terrible, Cheney-level disapproval ratings. And now, almost no one who played a significant role in that administration is anywhere to be found in electoral politics, beyond the tertiary orbits of Punch-and-Judy cable news and the remains of what used to be the conservative "think tank" circuit.

That's true even for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who had no formal role in his brother's administration but will probably always find the familial association an insurmountable obstacle to his own presidential hopes.

Unlike the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush presidency elevated precisely no one to the ranks of national leadership who wasn't there before. The 2008 Republican presidential primaries were like some odd eight-year cicada hatch in which the candidates went underground in 2000 and then birthed themselves after Bush and Cheney were gone, as if the intervening years had never happened.

The 2000 second-place finisher, Sen. John McCain? You're next in line for 2008! And four years later: second-place Mitt Romney? You're next in line for 2012!

The fascinating turmoil in the Republican Party since 2008 is not just a personnel problem — it's also ideological. The isolationism and libertarian iconography of the Ron Paul wing of the party really does appeal to young people more than Bush-Cheney Republicanism.

The Republican Party is a churning swirl of conflicting ideological currents, and that's going to take some time to work out. But part of the reason it may be taking so long already is those lost years: the period from 2000 to 2008 that effectively obviated the authority and the leadership potential of all of Washington's Republican elites. The George W. Bush administration didn't just cast too much shade on the next generation of leadership — it also apparently poisoned the ground.

The Obama administration's ability to nurture and support the next round of national leadership in the Democratic Party is going to be a big part of its long-term legacy. The collapse of national leadership prospects for the Republican Party is one of the greatest political failures and most important legacies of George W. Bush. President Barack Obama looks less likely to repeat that fate, but it depends on a strong grove of nationally viable Democrats starting to grow now.

The crescendo of attention to Elizabeth Warren is a healthy part of that process, as is the growing national interest in such diverse Democrats as Sherrod Brown, Claire McCaskill, Cory Booker, Wendy Davis, Martin O'Malley, Deval Patrick, Andrew Cuomo and Amy Klobuchar.

Inside the White House, the task of growing one's own successors must seem like one of the less pressing items on the president's long daily to-do list. But the previous administration's trail of scorched earth and exiles has curtailed the prospects for the Republican Party and governing conservatism more profoundly than almost anything that administration pursued in terms of policy.

It is a cautionary tale that Democrats and the Obama White House should heed sooner rather than later. Grow your successors, nurture your legacy.